Claude Ponti is a French illustrator and children's author known for his inventive and playful use of words and the symbolic nature of his illustrations. His first book, L'Album d'Adèle, written for his newborn daughter, displays the associative and dream-like presentation of children's interior lives that characterizes many of his works. Ponti was awarded the 2006 Sorcières Spécial prize for his contribution to literature, which now includes over seventy books of all types and for all ages. Elsewhere Editions has published four celebrated picture books by Ponti: My Valley, Hiznobyuti, Blaze and the Castle Cake for Bertha Daye, and Meeselphe.

Margot Kerlidou is a photographer, French tutor, and herbalist. Claude Ponti was her favorite author when she was a child.

Alyson Waters is a translator of modern and contemporary literary fiction, criticism and theory, as well as art history. She teaches literary translation workshops at Yale University, New York University, and Columbia.